This Is the Best Horror Movie Where Not a Single Character Dies

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Most horror movies are steeped in death. After all, the scariest thing most of us can imagine is the idea of our own demise. In slashers like Halloween and Scream, killers hack their way through unsuspecting victims. The Saw and Terrifier franchises are famous for their life-ending gore.

But, the truth is, no one needs to actually die in a horror movie for it to be scary. As John Carpenter once said, “Horror is a reaction; it’s not a genre.” The real horror is found in the scares put on screen and how our protagonists respond to them, not in killing off a movie’s characters. There are a number of great examples to prove this point, such as The Others, Signs, The Conjuring, and The Babadook, but for the best example of them all, look no further than Tobe Hooper‘s Poltergeist.

What Is ‘Poltergeist’ About?

Tobe Hooper is one of horror’s greatest directors as the man behind the iconic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and underrated gems such as The Funhouse. In 1982, he helmed arguably his second-best movie with Poltergeist, which was (at a minimum) produced and co-written by Steven Spielberg. Their pairing resulted in one of the era’s best horror movies.

Poltergeist‘s story centers on the Freeling family, whose home becomes the center for paranormal phenomenon. Husband and wife Steve (Craig T. Nelson) and Diane (JoBeth Williams) are the parents of three children, including teenage daughter Dana (Dominique Dunne) and a younger son, Robbie (Oliver Robins). The most memorable character of them all is 5-year-old Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke). One of the film’s creepiest scenes finds her talking to the static on the television, leading to one of horror’s most famous lines: “They’re here!” Later, Carol Anne is pulled into another dimension, and her family must fight to get her back.

Poltergeist was the ninth-biggest box office hit of 1982. It captured both the family drama Speilberg was known for and the terror Hooper had become famous for nearly a decade earlier with his tale of Leatherface and company. And despite the unimaginable hell the family encounters, not a single one of them, nor those who help them, lose their lives during the movie.

‘Poltergeist’ Finds Terror in the Highest of Stakes

True horror is found in the stakes. Something big needs to have the potential of being lost for the audience to care. If a hulking killer or a monster is simply ripping through people left and right, there is no reason for the viewer to be scared. But have an antagonist simply standing across from a well-written protagonist we’ve come to love and the tension becomes unbearable because we want to see our hero make it.

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Now that’s a scary idea for all the wrong reasons.

The biggest stakes of all involve the potential loss of a child. Heather O’Rourke is adorable as the blue-eyed, blonde, always happy and smiling Carol Anne. When supernatural occurrences start happening in her home, Carol Anne isn’t scared. She’s fascinated by it. After she’s pulled into and trapped within another realm, this changes. The viewer feels for her and the terror her parents are going through. Worse is that we never see Carol Anne in her paranormal prison. Outside of her voice being heard a few times, she’s lost and unseen, allowing our imagination to take over. It’s similar to what Spielberg did when he hid the shark in Jaws or when Hooper didn’t show the gore of death in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This doesn’t mean Poltergeist is a slow-burn that hides the horror and makes the viewer’s mind do all the work. Instead, the film takes the high stakes of an antagonizing family drama and layers it with some truly stunning practical effects.

Phenomenal Practical Effects Make ‘Poltergeist’ Feel Real

A man peels off his own face in 'Poltergeist' — A man peels off his own face in ‘Poltergeist’

Poltergeist doesn’t hide its monsters in the shadows with jump scares here and there. Its special effects, created by Industrial Lights & Magic, are so jaw-dropping that they earned a Best Visual Effects Oscar nomination, losing to Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. There is a skeletal apparition Diane confronts on the stairs, and an absolutely disgusting scene where a man has a vision of himself ripping the flesh from his own face. Somehow, this got through with a PG rating, which certainly had to scare the hell out of many kids who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.

Two scenes above all others convey the immense fear. Poltergeists tricks the audience by having Carol Anne saved, thus bringing what we think is the end of the movie. Instead, as soon as we let our guard down, that’s when the true horror kicks in. The supernatural forces strike, attempting to pull the entire family into another dimension. Just as Carol Anne could have been stuck forever in a sort of death, so could everyone else. In one of horror’s best jump scares, young Robbie is in his room when his toy clown comes to life, wrapping itself around him and pulling Robbie under the bed. Death is an option here if he doesn’t get away.

Death is also at the center of a scene with Diane when she stumbles into the hole outside where a pool is supposed to go. There, floating in the muck, are several rotting corpses from the burial ground the home is built on. While no one dies in Poltergeist, it doesn’t shy away from the subject of death, and the stakes are very high. Plus, there’s some irony here in real-life death being inextricably tied to a horror movie where no one actually dies. As it turns out, those skeletons were real! Additionally, two of the movie’s young stars would soon be gone, too. Dominique Dunne was only 22 when she was murdered mere months after Poltergeist was released. Heather O’Rourke died six years later at the age of 12. Poltergeist is already terrifying enough without that information. Reality makes it an unnerving rewatch. There is no safety to be found in Poltergeist, despite its lack of a kill count.